


Limpid As Dammit

by Gigi_Sinclair



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22242922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gigi_Sinclair/pseuds/Gigi_Sinclair
Summary: "The first time, Jaskier does it out of kindness, to avoid hurt feelings."
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 35
Kudos: 1060





	Limpid As Dammit

_"I was as limpid as dammit."-P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters_

The first time, Jaskier does it out of kindness, to avoid hurt feelings. 

The city of Nevgara is a mid-sized merchant town, full of people with coin in their pockets and the leisure time to spend it. Stories of the White Wolf have reached them even before Jaskier and Geralt arrive, and Jaskier is all too happy to spin those eagerly-anticipated tales in person, embellishing here and there for his captive audience. When his voice grows hoarse and he must, with great reluctance, depart the tavern's makeshift stage, he does so with a bulging purse and the admiration of all.

And of one young woman in particular. 

“Jaskier!” Tarine is sweet, pretty although she does not think it, and generous of spirit. So generous that she spent one memorable and rather athletic night with him many months ago, before Jaskier's talent was so widely appreciated. “It's good to see you again.” She steps forward, as if to embrace him, then hesitates. “Are you...I mean, do you plan to be here long?”

Love is a fickle creature. That sentiment is so common as to be cliché. It's not something Jaskier would ever sing about, it's too pedestrian. Still, he knows all too well the incomprehensible hummingbird's wing flash of desire, wherein one day a person appears to hold all the answers in the world within the deep limpid pools of their eyes, and the next it's just water and eye fluid. 

“I was happy to hear of your return,” Tarine goes on. “You have been well?”

“Very well. And you? Have you married?” Jaskier tries to keep overt hopefulness from his voice. 

“No,” Tarine replies, and his heart sinks. She opens her mouth as if to speak, closes it, then tries again. “Jaskier, now that you're back, I thought you and I might, you know...” She smiles, and he knows precisely. 

He needs an excuse. To turn her down flat will leave her with the impression she was good enough for an underrated performer, but not for the successful artist Jaskier has become. She already struggles with her self-image, Jaskier could tell that from one night. He would never do anything to make her feel worse. 

“I'm involved,” he says. “In a relationship.” He could leave it there, but Jaskier's natural inclination has always been to embroider. His gaze lands on Geralt, sitting beyond Tarine. He's alone in a corner, of course, nursing an ale he insisted on purchasing himself. “With Geralt,” Jaskier hears himself say. 

“Oh?” Tarine blinks. “I didn't realize that.”

He should bid her farewell and go, but Jaskier has never subscribed to the idea that one should always leave an audience wanting more. “Neither did we, at first. We were friends, until quite unexpectedly, our gaze met over the carcass of a recently decapitated cockatrice. There was blood on his face, wind in my hair. We both leaned in. Our lips met, and that was that. We're planning on getting married.”

“Congratulations, Jaskier.” Surprise seems to have given way to genuine pleasure. She really is a lovely person. Now, she steps forward to embrace him. Her hair is soft, and she smells like spiced bread. For a moment, Jaskier wonders if he's making the right decision. “Take care of yourself. And your beloved." 

“I'll invite you to the wedding,” he calls after her, as she disappears into the crowd. 

Satisfied with his deft and delicate handling of the situation, Jaskier makes his way over to Geralt, who raises an eyebrow. 

“You seem pleased with yourself.” 

“Yes.” He thinks about telling Geralt about his deep and admirable sensitivity, but Geralt doesn't seem the type to appreciate the nuance. “I've got enough coin for two rooms tonight.” 

Geralt grunts in what Jaskier assumes is gratitude. Jaskier should feel pleased at that, happy he can provide, but instead, a flash of strange disappointment passes through him. _It is awfully hard to spend all that money at once_ , he thinks. _But a good friend is worth it._ He smiles at Geralt, receives a glower in return, and calls for another mug of ale. 

***

The second time Jaskier does it, it's to avoid a fight. 

Jaskier is a terrible card cheat. His fingers lack the dexterity. He toyed, in the days before Geralt, with the idea of adding a few sleight of hand magic tricks to his act. That lasted until the village of Haraden, where he dropped an entire deck onto the stage in a fluttery cascade. Jaskier was used to derision, but that laughter and those boos rang in his ears for days. 

So cards are not Jaskier's friend. Neither, however, are those who cheat at them. When Jaskier notices his new compatriots in the otherwise empty bar in the village of Rix are just that, he decides to give them a taste of their own medicine. Unfortunately, the dosage is a little off. 

“You fuckin' cheater!” The man accuses, when Jaskier leans over and an ace, secreted during the last round, pokes traitorously out of his cuff. There are four of these men, all stocky, all bald, all with missing teeth. They resemble each other so closely, they might be brothers, or cousins. Or both. In this town, both is decidedly a possibility. 

“I say, sir,” Jaskier draws himself up. “That is rather the pot calling the kettle black.” 

The man is apparently uninterested in engaging in any self-reflection at this juncture. He stands, his chair falling to the ground behind him. His family members jump up to join him. Jaskier sees a flash of a blade, and he panics. 

Well, panics is perhaps not the right word. He does say, “Before you try anything, gentlemen, I would like to remind you my loving husband is just outside.” He could have said friend, he supposes, but he's glad he didn't. None of these men look like they've ever had a really good friend, not someone like Geralt. Not even Jaskier had, before. They wouldn't understand the lengths to which Geralt would go to protect Jaskier. 

The natural protectiveness of a spouse, however, seems obvious even to them. Jaskier sees them exchange glances. 

“The Butcher of Blaviken?” One man grunts. 

“That's him," Jaskier replies. "Love of my life, and I his. I don't care to think what he would do should he discover I was harmed in any way.” 

“I'm not dealing with that.” The most sensible of the cheaters declares. There is murmured assent from two of the others.

After a long, tense moment, the lone holdout spits on the floor. “Fuck off, then. I don't ever want to see you here again.” 

“Sir,” Jaskier replies, “I have no intention of returning.” 

He still hightails it out of there, just in case anyone has a change of heart. He's moving so fast he doesn't notice Geralt is in front of him until he runs directly into his solid bulk. “Ready to move on?” Jaskier asks, more breathlessly than he anticipated. 

“Already? I thought you wanted to rest your feet.”

“All rested! Rested as the day I was born!” He puts a hand on Geralt's arm, dragging him towards Roach. Geralt comes with him willingly. Jaskier has no illusions about being able to move him if he didn't. 

“Did something happen?” Geralt asks, frowning in the way Jaskier has learned denotes suspicion. As opposed to the dozens of other frowns in Geralt's repertoire. 

“Nothing interesting,” Jaskier replies, hoping Geralt won't ask any more questions. He doesn't. 

The next time they're in the area, Jaskier suggests bypassing Rix. Geralt raises an eyebrow, but doesn't comment on it. Nor does he comment when they encounter a magician doing card tricks in a village square, and Jaskier strides quickly, with great purpose, in the opposite direction. 

***

The third time, Jaskier does it to save his life. 

Witchers, Jaskier has learned, very rarely hunt witches. He is quite delighted when Geralt accepts a contract to rid a small city of a lady named Maldorya, with a penchant for black cats and turning the townsfolk into barnyard animals. Well, one of the townsfolk, at least. 

“The witch and the witcher,” Jaskier says cheerfully, as they make their way across the snowy plain, towards the mountain where Maldorya is said to live. “The song practically writes itself, doesn't it?”

“Just be careful,” is Geralt's predictable reply. 

“I'm always careful.” As proof of Jaskier's natural comedic timing, the words are barely out of his mouth before he trips into a hole and slides into a trap. The last thing he hears before the earth closes up behind him is Geralt's voice calling his name, accompanied by few choice words, with equal measures of irritation and concern. 

Despite the townspeople's belief that she lives in a cave or a hovel, Maldorya's home is actually quite quaint. It's below ground, which does lend it a certain rustic quality, but it is well lit, with tapers in every corner, and furnished with settees and sideboards so well-crafted and clearly expensive, they would make a middle-class merchant envious. 

“Your home is lovely,” Jaskier says, truthfully. It does nothing to ease the look of disappointment on Maldorya's face. She's no wizened crone, but rather a normal-looking woman, with greying blonde hair and a scowl. 

“You're a human," Maldorya accuses. 

“Last time I checked.”

She bends over, rummaging next to the sideboard. Jaskier tenses, expecting her to retrieve some vial of potion or cauldron of stinking stew. He's wrong. When she emerges, it is with a crossbow in her hands. 

“Oh.” Jaskier's heartrate, which had just begun to calm itself following his tumultuous and unexpected slide down here, picks up again. “I don't think that's really necessary, is it?” Not for a witch, certainly, but she begins to load her bow with an arrow.

“I hate humans,” she says, although she appears to be one herself. “Faithless creatures. I want the witcher.”

“He'll come for me!” Jaskier all but shouts."He loves me." It succeeds in stopping her.

“More fool he, then.” Maldorya looks at him. “I loved a human, too. He was an adulterer and a pig.” She smiles. “So I turned him into one. A pig, I mean.” 

As long as she's talking, she's not shooting. Jaskier can work with that. “You loved the wrong human.” 

Maldorya sneers. “They're all the same.” 

“No, we're not! I swear it.” Her expression does not convey conviction. Desperate, Jaskier's storytelling instincts kick in. “I'm faithful to him.”

“To the witcher?”

He nods. “Body and mind. I pledged myself to him the moment we met.” 

“That was foolish of you.” Maldorya lays down the crossbow. Jaskier thinks, very briefly, about lunging for it, then comes to his senses and sticks to what he does best: biding time until Geralt arrives. 

“Perhaps, but I've never regretted it.”

“Why would he bind himself to a human, of all things?” 

“Oh, I don't know.” Jaskier hopes his laugh sounds less nervous than he feels. “I like to think I have my good qualities.” Before he can enumerate them, Maldorya goes on:

“And why would you love someone so different from you?” 

“Because he is so worthy of love.” Jaskier warms to his tale. “He's strong, obviously, but he is also intelligent, and fair-minded, and so very eager to do good, although he hides it well. He grumbles at me, and complains about me, but he has never once failed me. He doesn't say it, but sometimes, when he thinks I'm not looking, he smiles at me and I know he feels as much for me as I do for him.”

“Who does?” The deep voice is not Maldorya's. With a single blow, she is senseless on her handsome hand-knotted rug, and Jaskier is looking Geralt in the eye. 

On the previous occasions, with Tarine and with the yokels of Rix, Jaskier had no trouble forgetting about his lie—or storytelling, as he preferred to call it—after the fact. This time, it's different. The idea of he and Geralt as more than friends, as a loving couple, sticks with him as they travel away from Maldorya's, having secured from her a promise to move away at once, or face a less forgiving witcher next time. 

It's when Geralt looks at him over the fire and says, “Why are you so quiet?” That Jaskier knows he has a problem. 

“Just thinking.” He picks up whatever skewered meat Geralt has prepared for him and takes a bite. It's well cooked, charred just the way he likes it, and not rat. Jaskier has no complaints. 

“About what?” 

Jaskier hesitates, but Geralt is his friend. His best friend. Best friends talk about everything. “I lied to Maldorya.” 

Geralt scoffs. “I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.” 

“I told her you and I were together. As in,” he goes on, to spare himself Geralt's inevitable look of confusion, “ _together_ together. Lovers. And it's not the first time I've done that.” 

“You've met her before?”

“No, I mean, not the first time I've told people we were lovers.” 

Geralt knits his brows, but it's a brow-knitting of confusion, rather than of rage. That's a good start, Jaskier supposes. “Why would you say that?” 

“Oh, various reasons.” He tries to make it sound casual, like it's something anyone would do. He takes another bite of not-rat and chews. Geralt, holding his own skewered meat in his hand, stares into the flames. “You know,” Jaskier goes on, because he's never met a silence he wasn't compelled to break, “let's just agree to forget I told you that, okay? I won't do it again.”

“Would you want to be?” 

“What?” 

Geralt looks exasperated, which is rich, Jaskier thinks, since he's the one making no sense. “Would you want to be lovers?” 

“With you?” He's pictured it, of course. Daydreamed about it, even. About Geralt's big cock, which he's seen plenty of times as the man climbs into and out of baths and lakes and rivers. About his strong thighs, about his big muscles. But also about the rare tenderness he's only ever seen Geralt show to two creatures on this continent: Roach, and Jaskier himself. He wasn't lying when he spoke those words to Maldorya. Like all great stories, there was a seed of truth in it. More than a seed. 

But it is not a seed Jaskier ever thought would flower, because Jaskier knows himself. He knows he couldn't bear it if he had Geralt's attention that way, then lost it. He couldn't bear if Geralt saw his eyes as limpid pools one day, and as nothing but eyes the next. 

“I've never seen you bed the same person twice,” he tells Geralt. 

“I could say the same of you," Geralt replies. _Touché._

“I would be scared to risk our friendship.” 

“I didn't think you were scared of anything.” If it was anyone else, Jaskier would have taken it for joking, or flirting. Geralt is as stony-faced as always, but there's a little flicker of something in his eyes, something Jaskier hasn't seen before. Whatever it is, it stirs Jaskier to set his non-rat skewer aside and go around to share Geralt's log. As usual, Geralt's body is casting off heat in waves. Jaskier hesitates, but just for a moment. Then, he takes a deep breath, and jumps off the cliff. 

It's not like kissing stone, or an otherworldly being, or like kissing anything other than a good-hearted, strong-willed man, with rough stubble and soft lips and a slight taste of grilled non-rat about him. All hesitation falls by the wayside as Jaskier throws his arms around Geralt's neck and hops onto his lap. Geralt grunts, but he doesn't push Jaskier away. Rather the reverse. He wraps his arms around Jaskier's middle, pulls him closer still, and kisses him like a man who knows what he's doing. _Why_ , Jaskier thinks, _the fuck didn't I say something sooner?_ It's the last coherent thought he has for quite some time. 

***

“Jaskier! Jaskier!” The voice is oddly familiar. Jaskier looks up from where he's attaching saddlebags to his horse Butterfly. Roach genuinely disliked her at first, then pretended to dislike her for a while, and now they spend most nights resting their necks against one another. 

“Tarine? I didn't expect to see you here.” They're three days' ride, at least, from her town of Nevgara. Jaskier and Geralt haven't been near there in months.

“I moved out here a while ago.” A bashful look comes to her face. “I met a woman. A farrier.” 

“Congratulations.” Jaskier leans forward to offer a hug. “There's no one more deserving of happiness than you.” He means it. 

“What about you?” Tarine looks over to where Geralt stands, settling a contract with the town mayor. It was an easy one this time: a lone jaculus, prone to dropping down from the trees and killing livestock, but no real danger to anything but cows. Geralt dispatched it within an hour. Unfortunately, the size of his salary is proportionate to the difficulty of the task. “I see you and your witcher are still together. Are you married yet?” 

“No, but Tarine, it's better than ever.” Geralt still looks at Jaskier like he has limpid pools, and doesn't seem inclined to stop anytime soon. As for Jaskier, he's working on an epic love song, the tale of a bard and a witcher, that has yet to be performed for anyone other than Geralt. Principally because it's a piece that requires a great deal of audience participation. 

“I'm so happy for you, Jaskier.”

He's so caught up in the general happiness, for Tarine and for himself, Jaskier's on the verge of suggesting the four of them go out for a meal or a game of darts or something, when Geralt comes over. “You ready?” He asks. 

“Go on,” Tarine says. It's probably for the best. He can't imagine Geralt and Tarine's farrier have much in common. All he and Tarine have in common are a few shared sexual experiences best not discussed in public. Best not discussed in front of Geralt. Although, now that Jaskier thinks of it, the idea of making him jealous might reap some rewards. “Don't forget,” Tarine adds, “you promised me an invitation to your wedding!”

“A wedding?” Geralt repeats, as he mounts his horse. 

Jaskier grins. “You'll have to ask a little more nicely than that, dear.” He throws his leg over Butterfly, takes up the reins, and rides off, with Geralt rolling his eyes beside him.


End file.
